They say that in such a moment a man reviews all his past life.  I don’t know whether Tommy did that; but his last reflection before he passed into unconsciousness was “Serves me right!” Perhaps it was only a little bit of sentiment for the end.

Lady Disdain came back to the gate, by and by, to see why he had not followed her.  She screamed and then hid in the recesses of the garden.  He had been dead for some time when they found him.  They left the gate creaking in the evening wind.  After a long time a terrified woman stole out by it.

CHAPTER XXXV

THE PERFECT LOVER

Tommy has not lasted.  More than once since it became known that I was writing his life I have been asked whether there ever really was such a person, and I am afraid to inquire for his books at the library lest they are no longer there.  A recent project to bring out a new edition, with introductions by some other Tommy, received so little support that it fell to the ground.  It must be admitted that, so far as the great public is concerned, Thomas Sandys is done for.

They have even forgotten the manner of his death, though probably no young writer with an eye on posterity ever had a better send-off.  We really thought at the time that Tommy had found a way.

The surmise at Rintoul, immediately accepted by the world as a fact, was that he had been climbing the wall to obtain for Grizel the flowers accidentally left in the garden, and it at once tipped the tragedy with gold.  The newspapers, which were in the middle of the dull season, thanked their gods for Tommy, and enthusiastically set to work on him.  Great minds wrote criticisms of what they called his life-work.  The many persons who had been the first to discover him said so again.  His friends were in demand for the most trivial reminiscences.  Unhappy Pym cleared Lll 10s.

Shall we quote?  It is nearly always done at this stage of the biography, so now for the testimonials to prove that our hero was without a flaw.  A few specimens will suffice if we select some that are very like many of the others.  It keeps Grizel waiting, but Tommy, as you have seen, was always the great one; she existed only that he might show how great he was.  “Busy among us of late,” says one, “has been the grim visitor who knocks with equal confidence at the doors of the gifted and the ungifted, the pauper and the prince, and twice in one short month has he taken from us men of an eminence greater perhaps than that of Mr. Sandys; but of them it could be said their work was finished, while his sun sinks tragically when it is yet day.  Not by what his riper years might have achieved can this pure, spirit now be judged, and to us, we confess, there is something infinitely pathetic in that thought.  We would fain shut our eyes, and open them again at twenty years hence, with Mr. Sandys in the fulness of his powers.  It is not to be.  What he